Tonx, Craft Coffee, and Club W Galore!

I’m expanding my subscriptions to beverages, perhaps to the disappointment of anyone reading this purely for the beauty/style/home components. Here are my latest additions and why I chose to subscribe. Reviews will follow, of course!

Tonx

Tonx (now Blue Bottle Coffee) sends you freshly roasted coffee on a biweekly basis. Their beans are sourced from all over but they do their own roasting. You can opt for a half-sack ($24/month for 12oz), the standard ($38/month for 24oz), or the double ($68/month for $48oz).

I first heard about Tonx (now Blue Bottle Coffee) via the Savage Lovecast as they have an introductory offer where they will send you 2oz for free. Dan Savage is so persuasive that I had to bite, although I registered for an account, let it sit for a day, and was subsequently sent an email to get a half-sack for $7.

That’s the one I ended up ordering even though free is technically cheaper. I just felt 6oz would give me a better opportunity to try the coffee, plus I’m something of a coffee snob. Not a knowledgeable snob by any means, but I have reasonably high standards for what I drink even though I’ll often have no idea why the hell I’m disliking something. (My biggest complaints are vague ones like it lacks body or tastes sour.) It helps to be living in a city with plenty of excellent coffee roasters, though!

I just did the math and I usually make my 17 oz French Press four times a week. (Enough for 2 cups of coffee.) I use 3-4Tbsp per pot, which is 1.5 – 2oz. That means I use between 24oz and 32oz a month. That said, in terms of coffee subscriptions I wouldn’t want to get more than the 12oz option since I can easily fill in the gaps with excellent local roasters.

Craft Coffee

Yes, again, with the coffee. Craft Coffee does thorough research of coffee roasters all over the country and performs exhaustive taste tests of the roasts before selecting the three they will send out that month. (Watch the video on their site – it’s pretty fascinating.) You get three 4oz bags of coffee, each from a different roaster, each month. It’s $24.99/month or there are less expensive plans if you pay for 6 months or 1 year upfront. Craft Coffee would cost me $2.08/oz.

Compare this to buying my favorite coffee off the shelf at the local grocery. Stumptown costs me $15 for a 12oz bag which is $1.25/oz. Obviously it’s cheaper to buy local, so I don’t anticipate these coffee subscriptions being a regular thing for me, but we’ll see how I enjoy them!

Club W

Finally, we get to the alcohol. I already summarized Club W in a previous post so I won’t go into a huge amount of detail. I’m fairly ignorant when it comes to wines. I will usually buy based on labels and am thrilled when stores have the helpful rating tags next to the bottles so I can feel confident when I purchase a wine that’s at least an 85. I also generally don’t spend less than $10 on a bottle of red, but that’s likely borne from pure superstition as someone once told me that cheaper red wines were artificially colored.

Club W to the rescue! You fill out a short profile so they can determine your palate, specify the ratio of red/white wines you would like and they’ll send you 3 bottles a month at $39 + $6 S&H. (If you order 6 or more bottles then S&H is free.)

As I mentioned previously, I did some cursory searching on the wines they offered and they seemed well rated (mid-80’s and up) and middle-priced (averaging $11/bottle retail). You are paying a little markup for the curation and the service. For someone who doesn’t drink wine often at all but would like to be more competent at tasting it this seems like a good introduction.

The best part about Club W has to be the referral program. You have two referral codes that you can use that will allow you to refer someone and they get one free bottle and you’ll get two free bottles. (Note, I was confused earlier and thought this applied to all referrals but that is not the case.) I’m planning on offering my referral codes to my dad and perhaps a friend who enjoys wine!